%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1334566128027371800%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.%%[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Trainspotting}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trainspotting-toilet-3_5929.jpg]]]][[caption-width-right:350: [[ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure There is not enough bleach in the world to ever make this right.]]]]

->''"I fantasize about a massive pristine convenience. Brilliant gold taps, virginal white marble, a seat carved from ebony, a cistern full of Chanel no.5, and a flunky handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll. But under the circumstances I'll [[TemptingFate settle for anywhere]]."''-->--'''Mark Renton''', ''Literature/{{Trainspotting}}''[[note]]The toilet he gets can be seen to the right[[/note]]

When PottyEmergency strikes, one is forced to find a place to go, fast. Looking around, you notice a public toilet. You sigh with relief, until you open the door...

This place is littered with BathroomStallGraffiti, spare bits of toilet paper and paper towels, liquids and solids of undetermined origin (or rather, [[TooMuchInformation origins you]] ''[[TooMuchInformation don't]]'' [[TooMuchInformation want to think about]]), and a toilet bowl that was possibly installed discoloured, clogged and smelling. It's full of used syringes, sleeping hobos, dead hobos. The handles on the faucets and bowls may be missing. In this case, it is probably better to just go in the woods behind it.

Part of the reason this trope exists is a form of the {{GIFT}}. While ''clearly'' not on the internet; the idea that anonymity and lack of consequences/responsibility leads to [[JerkAss complete asshattery]] is still demonstrated. People naturally expect privacy in the restroom, and public toilets are not cleaned by ''them'', so they feel less guilty for trashing them, scrawling insults on the wall, or [[BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults insulting their peers]]. And the less said about "[[HandInTheHole glory holes]]" cut in the partition walls, the better. It is fading, but there's no better way to ensure the janitor will hate you than ruining the bathroom.

This trope of course comes from RealLife, as anyone who's ever had to go at a rest stop, a park bathroom etc. can attest. Even an ill-maintained flush toilet is extremely disgusting, but pretty much any toilet without flush technologies is going to be worse (even Porta-Potties tend to be a borderline case). Outhouses and latrines were once a familiar and disgusting part of everyone's life, and while they are now rare in the industrialized world, they're still necessary in situations like wilderness camping or a [[TheDungAges Third World village]]; therefore, the outhouse isn't something that will ever become so [[TechMarchesOn obsolete]] that people [[ForgottenTrope entirely forget]] such a nauseating (but necessary!) phenomenon. Can be played for [[ToiletHumour laughs]] or just plain NauseaFuel. Contrast with WondrousLadiesRoom.

[[noreallife]]----!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Advertising]]* There's this commercial where a drag queen has to make a stop at a truck stop toilet, which is naturally horrible - then she brings out the product advertised and turns it all sparkling.-->"How was the restroom?"\\"Fit for a queen."* There's a Lysol ad that starts out with a woman taking her daughter into such a restroom, making the point that your own toilet might be just as full of germs. Mocked in one of Current's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqDzKad2Q3M&ob=av3e Target Women]] segments:-->'''Sarah Haskins:''' Why are you taking your kid to the bathroom in Grand Central Station in 1972?!?[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]* Polnareff of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' [[RunningGag keeps running into these.]] The first one he went to had ''a pig sticking its head out of the toilet''.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]* In an early issue of ''Comicbook/{{Excalibur}}'', Kitty Pryde needs to answer a call of nature while being carried by Meggan across the Atlantic. They spot a freighter and land on it so she can go to the restroom, but the place is disgustingly filthy.* In ''ComicBook/LikeAVelvetGloveCastInIron'' there is one of these located in a porno theatre. Inside a special cubicle is a Hindu wise-man who starts the main character on his quest to find his wife. Uh... and some other stuff.* A writer trying to track down [[ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}} John Constantine]] for an article ends up beaten and face down in a disgusting pub bathroom. And it's implied it wasn't even John's fault; that much bad luck just descends on everyone around him.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Fic]]* In the ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' FanFic ''Don't Panic'', the Prancing Pony restroom is one of these. Obligatory comparison to the bathroom from ''Trainspotting'' ensues.* There is a [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9812307/1/The-Many-Worlds-Interpretation crossover fanfic]] in assembly at Website/FanfictionDotNet, where the slightly maladjusted Doctor Sheldon Cooper and friends from ''TheBigBangTheory'' are inevitably going to end up in the city of Ankh-Morpork on the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''. Lavatory technology on the Discworld lags some 200 years behind modern California. A hole in the ground and a septic tank are considered posh. And Sheldon Cooper is... Sheldon Cooper. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]* "The Worst Toilet in Scotland" in ''Film/{{Trainspotting}}''. Including cringeworthy scene where the hero dives into the toilet bowl.* 'The worst toilet in Scotland' was also referenced in ''Film/GorskyAndButch'': In a pastiche of ''Film/TheMatrix'', the whole team escaped through the pipe, with Morphinius staying behind to flush them. It resulted in TheCanKickedHim when agent Butch caught up with him.* The Port Authority bus terminal bathroom is like this in ''Film/NickAndNorahsInfinitePlaylist''.* The bathroom of the Narrator used in ''Film/FightClub'', complete with a revolting bathtub and water faucets that spew out brown water. * In ''Film/{{Desperado}}'', the entrance to the secret room is concealed within a truly disgusting bathroom stall.* The setting for most of the first ''Film/SawI'' movie.* Subverted in ''Film/TheWarriors''. The bathroom in which the Warriors face the Punks is a bit grungy, but it's nowhere near as bad as one would expect from a public mens' room in a New York City subway station.* The public bathroom in ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater'' is a good example of this trope. It's dark and grimy, the faucets are leaky, the floor is covered in litter and there is no toilet paper in the stalls. One wonders why the mother didn't just tell her daughter to pee in the bushes. At least then, it would be much more hygienic!* The toilet on board the train from ''Film/TheMummyReturns'' is revolting, the moreso as whomever used it before Alex hadn't bothered to flush.** ''And'' when you do flush it, it just dumps out onto the train tracks. Eewww!!* In ''{{Film/Accepted}}'', the team visits a former mental institution for the first time in an attempt to clean it up. But upon seeing the bathroom, everyone gags and closes the door as soon as they opened it. Furthermore, the school is then opened to all sorts of people, but only the protagonist is concerned that his parents will see the filthy mess.* There's one in ''Film/NoHoldsBarred'' in the BadGuyBar that Mr. Brell visits.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]* Creator/DaveBarry described places like this as either "not having been cleaned since Rome fell" or "containing the skeletons of Health Inspectors who died trying to examine it". A column about summer camp referred to it having the sort of latrine where you wonder how it could get so disgusting when nobody ever has the courage to use it.* Referenced in the first ''Literature/HarryPotter'' - apparently, mountain trolls smell like a cross between old socks and "the kind of public toilet no-one seems to clean."* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl: The Lost Colony'' includes a scene where Mulch tracks Doodah Day to a secret shellfish restaurant popular with pixies (who love lobster even though it's illegal in the Lower Elements.) He has to get through a filthy toilet stall in a dive bar to find the secret establishment within.-->'''Pixie Hostess:''' Do you have a reservation?-->'''Mulch:''' More than one. For starters, do you think it's a good idea to put the secret entrance to an illegal restaurant in the bathroom? It didn't fool me, and I think I've lost my appetite.* ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' gamebook ''[[Literature/{{Sorcery}} The Crown of Kings]]'' has one in the guard barracks, complete with illustration. You can search it if you want. [[spoiler:[[SchmuckBait There's nothing useful or interesting at all there, and you risk catching a disease by searching it.]]]]* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': Since Borogravia has not encountered the invention of [[NamesakeGag Sir Charles Lavatory]], the men's privy at the inn where Polly enlists in ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'' is pretty gross, to the point where behind a tree is a better option, even if it's snowing and you can hear wolves. The one at the Duchess isn't much better; Polly sloshes two buckets of water in every day while trying not to breathe, but that doesn't stop weird moss from growing on the floor.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]* Mike Rowe in ''Series/DirtyJobs'' has seen some of these. The bathroom in New Orleans shown after Hurricane Katrina deserves special recognition.* Subverted in ''Series/{{Monk}}''. Monk expects the men's room at the theater to be like this, but instead it's incredibly clean and even has an attendant offering a variety of scented soaps.* During a segment of ''Not Necessarily the News'', Danny Breen is asked to check out a men's bathroom in a New York City subway, something he is disgusted by - it's not helped by the gunk on the doorknob. However, when he enters, he's greeted by a men's room attendant dressed as TheJeeves, with a palatial bathroom.* In one episode of ''Series/TheOffice'' Jim and Michael go out on a sales call. When the camera catches Micheal coming out of a gas station's Womans Room, he explains that the Men's was too disgusting to use.* The MTV show ''Homewrecker'', which modified the bedrooms of pranksters into unlivable disaster rooms (think ''Trading Spaces'' or ''Series/ExtremeMakeoverHomeEdition'' turned on their heads), turned one room into one of these.* The Singaporean talkshow ''It's A Small World'' is about foreign talents working in Singapore discussing cultural differences - one episode, on the subject of travel, leads up to the subject of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARgIHPlgYLc&feature=related toilets all over the world]], naturally leading to this trope. Of special note, one 'toilet' in China is basically out in the open, with little ditches with some running water acting as the 'receptacles', and the running water isn't very strong so some stuff will be left around...* On ''TheJohnLarroquetteShow'', the bus station has one of these as a RunningGag.-->'''John''': ''People'' did that? Bears, I could imagine. But ''people''?[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]* Music/WeirdAlYankovic's song "One More Minute" details all of the disgusting, painful, and generally unpleasant things the protagonist would rather do than spend one more minute with the girl who has just dumped him. One of these things is cleaning all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with his tongue.* "No Lock on the Door" by The Lancashire Hotpots is about one of these at the singer's [[MyLocal local pub]]; the eponymous complaint is just one of very, very many.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pro Wrestling]]* The restroom with the overflowing trough urinals in No Holds Barred at the "Battle of the Tough Guys" venue.[[/folder]]

[[folder:StandUpComedy]]* Creator/RickyGervais in ''Fame'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BUFYh2Xnj4 finds that]] even the most refined places - where there's classical music playing and people discussing Kierkegaard - will have the most revolting toilets. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]* ''Theatre/{{Urinetown}}'' has Public Amenity #9, where the poor have to pay to pee. Many of them would rather do it anywhere else, especially given that the line in front of the decrepit toilet runs to the hundreds, but for the DystopianEdict against it.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]* ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' opens in one of these. James eventually ''plunges his hand into one of these to get a key''. [[NauseaFuel Ugh]]...* ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' also features equally disgusting toilets, though unlike James, Heather outright refuses to stick her hand in one [[OldSaveBonus if you have Silent Hill 2 save data on the same memory card]].* ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' starts with a [[CampingACrapper grisly murder]] in the Disgusting Toilet of a GreasySpoon.* The restrooms in the adventure game ''VideoGame/DarkFall: The Journal'' are fairly gross, and they've gotten much, ''much'' worse in the latest sequal, ''Dark Fall: Lost Souls''. Averted in ''Dark Fall II: Light's Out'', as the tourist restrooms on Fetch Rock [[spoiler: 2004]] aren't filthy, they just need their trash bins emptied.* This can be a randomly-rolled fear of a [[VideoGame/TheSims Sim]], which means that they fear using a public toilet in general, even if it's clean, but when it's one of these it becomes a thousand times worse.* In ''HectorBadgeOfCarnage'' Hector starts the game by having to fish out something out of a toilet in the prison cell of a police station which while not 'public' fits the trope completely. After many other disgusting bathroom jokes and puzzles, episode 3 has you interacting with the portable public toilet at an outdoor festival.* Inverted In ''SamAndMaxHitTheRoad''; the bathrooms at Snucky's are told to be the cleanest. After Max does his business, he and Sam decide to steal the keys as no one deserves bathrooms that clean.* Aya Brea in ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'' has great fun discussing the bathrooms and lavatories she investigates, before coming to the conclusion she needs to get out more.* In ''Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey'', you don't see the bathroom itself, but apparently the ''Red Sprite'''s bathroom gets so disgusting that Kanbari, "God of the Privy", invades. After you defeat him, he chides the crew for not taking better care of their facilities.* One of the chore minigames in ''VideoGame/CookServeDelicious'' involves this at first, but this can be subverted when the player upgrades it.* Subverted in ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite''. One of the toilets in the Salty Oyster restaurant has flies all around it and two brown lumps in it, setting up this trope... but the lumps turn out to be potatoes. Which you can eat.* The dook huts (Porta-Potties which double as loot chests) in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' are purest distilled nausea fuel. When you open one, you're greeted with a revolting squish noise and a geyser of sewage. Have fun rooting through that!* ''VideoGame/LakeviewCabin Collection'' uses a movie theater for its HubWorld; one of the toilets is completely backed up, overflowing and completely unusable.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]* ''San Antonio Rock City'' [[http://www.mitchclem.com/rockcity/index.php?comic=56 "Autobiography II"]]* In ''Webcomic/DaisyOwl'', [[http://www.daisyowl.com/comic/2008-08-11 the Rest Stop bathroom described by Mr. Owl]] is a humorously extreme example.* ''Webcomic/BetterDays'': [[http://www.jaynaylor.com/betterdays/archives/2005/10/chapter-13-thic-3.html]]* Subverted in [[http://egscomics.com/?date=2010-10-20 this]] ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive.'' Someone really takes pride in keeping that gas station bathroom clean.* In [[http://www.mascotcomic.com/index.php?strip_id=1109 this]] ''Webcomic/ImMyOwnMascot'' comic, this leads to the destruction of the Earth.* An old sub-comic hosted on ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'', ''Jailhouse Blues'', featured Nasty Toilet Man, the multiple failed attempts at defeating became a running gag of sorts. He was finally beaten with More Ammunition Than God and a microwave.* In [[http://deathandmaiden.com/2009/05/18/inside-the-outhouse-2 this]] ''Webcomic/DeathAndTheMaiden'' comic, the protagonists try to loose one of Death's 'accidental' corpses in a public bathroom stall, getting second thoughts when seeing the stall. Nobody, they reason, would sit there - not even to die.* Subverted in an old ''Basil Flint'' strip. Basil expects a gas station's restroom to be filthy...and is ''awestruck'' when it turns out to be the cleanest restroom he has ever seen. [[MundaneMadeAwesome He spends an entire strip sitting on the toilet basking in the restroom's radiance.]]* ''[[http://st_dyphna.comicdish.com/ St. Dyphna Academy]]'': There's one bathroom at the school so absolutely filthy that even the ghost won't go into it.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]* The website ''RetailHellUnderground'' has an entire section dedicated to this. Let's just say...people do some ''really'' disturbingly gross things in public bathrooms, and sometimes even ''worse'', when people don't even make it ''to'' the toilet, or when they mistake the ''fitting rooms'' for a Bathroom Stall.** The book ''RetailHell'' by Freeman Hall, one of the founders of Retail Hell Underground, describes a story in which he walks into the bathroom and finds that someone had taken a massive dump in the urinal, and nobody could use the men's room for the rest of the day. He also describes a very disturbing incident involving a fitting room disaster...Let's ''not'' go there. TooMuchInformation. Really, let's ''NOT''.* Website/{{Cracked}} has this article in which a normal, decent restroom gradually becomes one: [[http://www.cracked.com/funny-4928-public-restrooms/]]* In ''[[http://www.eastpark.hu/index2.html East Park 3.]]'' the toilet bathroom has [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Xenomorph]] eggs in it.* There once was an [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP]] called The Worst Place/Thing In The World which is located inside a porta-potty. It's driven all who have seen it, even over a video feed, insane. So do most [=SCPs=] really, but this one does a really good job of it. Although it was removed from the official SCP site, one may still find it [[http://scpclassic.wikidot.com/scp-100 elsewhere]].* In Season 12 of Machinima/RedvsBlue, Grif finds one [[spoiler:stuffed with a dead body]].* In an episode of WebVideo/CounterMonkey, Spoony describes how he used to clean/"muck out" the facilities in the game store he once worked at. It was not pretty. As he described it, when faced with a public restroom, gamers seemed to "lose all sense of public decency".* In "20 Reasons Why NOT to Be 'In Da Club'" by WebVideo/MatthewSantoro, Matthew says that the bathrooms at clubs are a reason to not go to the club. He gags, and says that that reason is self-explanatory, so he won't bother getting into it.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]* On ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'', Bloo has to stop at a truck stop to go to the bathroom, and he wears plungers on his feet "because public bathrooms are so grody" and he wants to keep from stepping in the germs.* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'', the episode "Potty Emergency", Wakko is in a desperate search to find a bathroom and arrives at a gas station. When he turns on the light, the entire wall seems to recede: It's covered ceiling to floor in cockroaches, and the rest of the horrors within are mercifully implied by Wakko's reaction to it rather than shown to us.-->'''Wakko''': I can't potty in there! It's disgusting!** In the ''Animaniacs'' movie ''Wakko's Wish'', King Salazar's torture routine involves a trip though the same restroom. The attendant's previous warning of "I haven't cleaned it in a year" is changed to three years. PlayedForLaughs, obviously.* In a ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' DirectToVideo movie ''How I Spent My Summer Vacation'', we don't see a bathroom, but we do see Hampton's family suit up in [[HazmatSuit hazmat type suits]] so they can clean the public bathrooms before using it.* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' - there's a porta-john at the Venture compound yard sale. They're never really pleasant, but the Monarch just won't shut up about it. He ends up determined to break into the building and find a ''real'' bathroom.[[/folder]]